I have lit myself on fire (I'm in a Darwin Awards book), been on stage with Penn & Teller, TV with Super Dave Osborne, scored at Maple Leaf Gardens, "sold" music to Kevin Smith, been in a commercial, and appeared homeless in a rap video. I'm a huge fan of golf, hockey, science, the Oxford comma, and equality. I currently write, create, and eat snacks.

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June 26, 2017

June 20 - Day 18 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I wish I heard on the radio

Back in 1991 I had some wicked seats for the Van Halen show in Toronto. Those were the Sammy Hagar days, but whatever. My friend Jon and I were something like ninth row center and it was at the then named Skydome (now the Rogers Centre). We got to the show early and settled into our seats and the opening act came on. It was Alice in Chains. By the end of the set the crowd was, shall we say, not exactly interested. The lead singer, Lane Stanley, was not pleased with the tepid reception his soon-to-be superstar alternative rock band had received and he yelled into the mic, “thank you Toronto for being the worst fucking crowd we've ever played to,” and he dropped the mic (not in a cool mic drop way like people do now) and they walked off stage, never to be heard from again. Well, not exactly. They ended up becoming a bit of a big deal and are the unofficial fourth band in the grunge axis of awesome along with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden. Lane was a troubled soul and succumbed to his addition in 2002 but left behind a musical legacy that helped shape a generation. This is a song I don’t recall hearing on the radio but wish they would play. Don’t Follow, by Alice in Chains.

June 21 - Day 19 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song from my favourite album

The opening track, "Where the Streets Have No Name" is, in my opinion, one of the most iconic opening tracks on any album ever and is featured as the opening of U2's movie Rattle and Hum based on their Joshua Tree tour from 1987-1988.
I was lucky enough to see the album played live in its entirety this past Friday night with my fifteen-year-old daughter and it was everything I had hoped for and more. Hearing any song on that album invokes the best memories.
I remember stuffing envelopes as a fundraiser for my hockey team back then and one of the coaches had a company that made binders and other back-to-school type stuff. He was licensed to sell Joshua Tree binders (black with a gold outline of the tree from the album cover on it). The team spent the afternoon listening to that album and stuffing envelopes as mail out promos for 5¢ a piece (or something like that).
I also remember at summer camp there was a counsellor named Roop who wore a black Joshua Tree t-shirt. He was one of the coolest counsellors in the place and him wandering around in that t-shirt is burned into my brain. I can even tell you what cabin he was standing in front of the first time I saw him wearing it.
Most of all, I remember the craft hut at camp. The summer of 1988 I was in cabin 12. It's the cabin that, due to some large trees in the way, was set back from the others in cabin row. Of course, there were lots of stories about why the cabin was set so far back and they were all some variation of a serial killer / monster story set on scaring the pants off you. That didn't happen, we were all 14 and very little rattled us, but one effect this did have was to give cabin 12 a sense of uniqueness, rebellion, and outcast.
One day I had a free period and everyone went off to the rec hall to do something silly. It was raining and I wasn't feeling up to shenanigans so I wandered off to the craft hut. I was a scrawny kid with long blond bangs and still quite awkward. I wasn't exactly Romeo with the ladies and while not un-cool I never exactly achieved full cool status. The craft hut was filled with some girls from cabin 2 (same age as me) and I just walked in and sat down at a table with five or six of them and started working on a gimp bracelet. Didn't say a word.
The final riff from The Edge's guitar on the opening track of Joshua Tree was playing and when track two started playing I started to sing along, quietly, as I made my craft. A few of the other girls started to sing as well, and soon it turned into a full blown sing-along. We spent the rest of the hour singing along and crafting with that album playing. In fact, I can't recall a single piece of conversation that happened in the hour I was there. I'm sure there must have been some, but it sure didn't feel like it. It was just me, ten girls from cabin 2, a couple counsellors, and U2.
For 60 minutes in the summer of 1988, I found what I was looking for.

June 22 - Day 20 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I listen to when I’m angry

I, like many other young punks of the time, used to jump into the mosh pit when a Nine Inch Nails song came on and throw my body around with reckless abandon letting out some rage and aggression. Sometimes mosh pits would get a little bit rough and tumble and a good old fashioned donnybrook would break out, but most of my experiences with it were pretty tame. I break easily so I never really got right in the middle of it.
One day I was down at a club in Toronto with a friend of mine and we were wandering around and Head Like a Hole came on and he and I jumped into the pit. It didn’t take too long before bodies were being tossed left and right and limbs were flailing this way and that. There was this one particular dude who seemed to be having more of a seizure than he was moshing and, in a terrible sequence of events, he ended up accidentally elbowing me square in the face.
It was a knockout blow if there ever was one and down I started to go. That was, until my friend reached out and grabbed me by the front of my baggy flannel shirt, yanked me to my feet, moved me out of the pit, and held me up until my eyes uncrossed and my head stopped spinning.
That was the second time this particular friend saved my ass (or my head, as it were) from a mosh pit/crowd surfing debacle (I think I bought him a round but if I didn’t then I owe you one, Kirb).

June 23 - Day 21 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I listen to when I’m happy

There are a few songs that are impossible to not be happy when hearing them and Spirit of the West has a few in this category. Born from the West Coast Canadian music scene, this band has a distinctly East Coast sound with lots of fiddle, foot stomping, and that hand drum thingy you whack with a small stick as you twist your wrist to and fro really quickly.
The song that I’ll put on when I’m in a good mood is one that was the anthem of many a university dorm room, particularly “The Zoo” at the University of Western Ontario, which in its day had earned a five-star reputation for being the partyingest dorm in Canada. It’s also my go-to song for when my house is in such a state of disrepair that there doesn’t appear to be any hope of salvaging it.
“The furniture’s on fire, this house is a disgrace, someone change the locks before we trash this place! Save this house!”

June 24 - Day 22 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I listen to when I’m sad

There was a time in my life when I found out someone died or was sick or was seriously ill or just plain stricken with grief and the same song would come on the radio. For a two-year period in the early ‘90’s, without fail, this would happen. Every time I would hear it I would get this impending sense of doom and I would spend the next several hours flinching whenever the phone rang.
Thankfully, the disturbing trend didn’t continue, but if I’m feeling low sometimes I’ll throw this song on just let myself wallow for a bit, because everybody hurts, sometimes.

June 25 - Day 23 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I want to play at my wedding

Seeing as I was married in 1999 to my beautiful wife, Jodi, there should be songs from our wedding. We didn’t have a “typical” reception, though, and there was no dancing. We had an early dinner at a restaurant and then went back to a friend’s house for some drinks and socializing. We did, however, have some music being played for the processional, recessional, and during the signing of the registry.
When Jodi and I met the organist she sat down and played some snippets of songs asking us if whatever she was playing were the types of thing we were looking for. When she started into “The Long and Winding Road” by the Beatles her operatic voice and emphatic mashing of the piano had both Jodi and me stifling laughter and anytime we hear that song we both do a reasonable impression.
We ended up not using that song, or maybe it was in with the other songs while we were signing the registry, I can't quite remember what we used in there. Instead, we went for something a little more traditional with Pachelbel’s Canon in D as our processional and Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring for the recessional. I love both those songs and decided that for our fifth anniversary I would secretly learn to play it on the piano and surprise Jodi with a performance.
For this, I also needed to learn how to play the piano.
So off I went and I sort of learned to play it and sort of performed for her on our anniversary. I ended up only being able to play just the right hand and not even all the way through, but it was a fun experience nonetheless.
For our 10th anniversary, I ended up getting the first few bars of it tattooed on my right arm (the right-hand part only, of course), which later became the base for a pretty wicked tree tattoo.
Here’s a fantastic 80’s rock/metal cover of the classic Bach tune:

June 26 - Day 24 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I want played at my funeral

I haven’t really put much thought into my funeral, to be honest. I’ll be dead so there’s little I can say about it and I guess what happens after I cease to live is out of my control. I think I’d like a low-key service with my family and some close friends. I don’t want any big long-winded speeches where the officiant drones on and on about loss and grieving, and I certainly don’t want there to be any religion. Ideally, people would convene at the beach beside a small fire and everyone would have a beverage of their choosing in hand and everyone would get a chance to share a story about a time when I made them laugh. Around the circle, I want them to go, remembering one thing that made them chuckle or otherwise brought a smile to their face.
After everyone has a turn I’d like to have this song played, because if not for the presence of all those people in my life, I would never have been able to enjoy mine as much as I have, and that deserves a thank you.

June 19, 2017

June 13 - Day 11 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song from my favourite band

Ah! What to do? There are three bands that jump immediately to mind when someone asks me who my favourite band or artist is: Rush, U2, and The Watchmen. I listed them in the reverse order of preference :-) Rush was my first fanboy experience, U2 was there throughout some of my most enjoyable and memorable experiences as a teenager, and The Watchmen has been my fave from 1993 onward. Ken is one of the finest folks you'll ever meet (and one hell of a musician) and I have a truckload of good memories from their shows.

They don’t have a lot of stuff online and my friend Alex loves the band but hasn't seen them play live in decades. I couldn't possibly pick a favourite so I'll pick a song that is his favourite. You can get a feel for how awesome it is to see these guys perform in this video. They don’t play often, but if you can see them I’d recommend going.

“The second night without you is no better than the first. I hope the third one won’t be worse.”

June 14 - Day 12 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song from a band I hate

It really pains me to do this. Even writing their name makes me cringe and all I can think of is the picture of the lead singer standing with his arm around Stephen Harper (coincidentally enough the Canadian Prime Minister I hate the most). Chad Kroeger from Nickelback shares a birthday with a tattoo artist that has done a lot of work on my wife and I. We were getting work done one say and this fact came out and he went on a classic rant about Chad and Nickelback, most of which can’t be repeated.

“And what the fuck is on Joey’s head? Fuck you, you asshole! It’s a fucking yarmulke! He’s Jewish!” – Wayne

June 15 - Day 13 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that is a guilty pleasure

Okay, so here's the thing. My formidable years were in the 80's. Big hair, fantastically ugly gym shorts with matching tube socks, and lots of synthesizers and electronic drums. Did I mention the big hair? During that time I had what could only be described as a "diverse" taste in music. The first cassettes I ever bought were The Box (self-titled, 1984) followed by Fleetwood Mac (Rumors, 1977), and Pink Floyd (The Wall, 1982).

The height of hysteria came in the form of Michael Jackson and I was a huge fan and got Thriller on vinyl. I wasn't alone in this craze, however. Nor was I alone in my appreciation for Culture Club, Cindy Lauper, Corey Hart, Gino Vannelli, Gowan, U2, The Who, Bryan Adams, or the American Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen ;-) and of course, Madonna!

To this day, I know at least the chorus to more Madonna songs than any of the other acts I've mentioned with the possible exception of Pink Floyd and U2. A personal favourite of mine happens to be Material Girl and you'll find me singing out loud (chorus only – see a previous post on me not knowing the lyrics to anything) in my car and then looking around to make sure nobody heard me with that look on my face that kind of resembles a cat that just fell off the couch while licking its butt and is now strutting across the floor all, "Yeah, totes did that on purpose."

June 16 - Day 14 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that no one would expect me to love

I don’t know what people would not expect me to love. There are some that stand out that are obvious choices for songs I *do* love but I tend to like a wide variety of music with the exception of gangsta rap and a good amount of country. Jodi is the true music lover and I end up liking quite a bit of what she downloads. I fill my iPod with what I like and then tell it to fill the free space with random stuff from the library.

A few years back we went to see Jason Mraz (we had pretty good seats too) and as is customary with Jodi she had all the music from artists we were going to see in concert loaded into a playlist. So, on the way down to the show (about an hour’s drive) we were listening to Jason Mraz as well as the opening act for the tour, Christina Perri.

Jason Mraz was okay. He certainly did nothing to turn me into a fan, though the guys he had playing the brass instruments were fantastic. Christina Perri, on the other hand, absolutely wowed me. She put on a great show and sounded equally as great. When her songs come on the iPod when I’m driving the volume goes up every time. Avery and I sing this one together if I’m driving her to the bus. It’s my favourite Christina Perri tune and a song I think no one would expect me to love.

June 17 - Day 15 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that describes me

Me in a nutshell:

I am fiercely and proudly Canadian

I love hockey and I married a woman who doesn’t give a fuck about it (and I never saw someone say that before)

In grade school, I was a pro at the flexed arm hang

My temperament is like a firework. There’s a short fuse that burns too quickly and then there’s an explosion.

June 18 - Day 16 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I used to love but now hate

I don’t like this category. I’d prefer if it was a song that I used to hate but now love, but rules are rules so I’ll take a crack at it.

I had a hard time coming up with anything that I used to love but now hate. I have found that if I like a song I like a song and that doesn’t change much over time. There are some songs that have lost a bit of luster and a bunch of these songs are Counting Crows songs. Remember how I mentioned that we’d put the Counting Crows on at bedtime? Since there were only so many low key CDs out there the Counting Crows were played a lot. So much Counting Crows.

I guess after so many years their music has just lost a bit of its allure. This song was big when I was in university and I “danced” to it. I’m sure I had a jolly ole time singing along, but now if it comes on I turn it off.

June 19 - Day 17 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song I hear often on the radio

In the morning when I’m shaving and in the shower, we will listen to Magic 106.1 out of Guelph, Ontario. Their website says they play “Today’s Best Mix”. At dinner time and other meals spent eating as a family we listen to 96.7 CHYM FM who proclaims to bring us “Today’s Best Music”. If I’m to believe their slogans both of these stations will be playing me the best of music currently being put out by artists, however, he genres are fairly narrow. I think for the most part they can be considered “Top 40” with a few less current tunes thrown in every now and then.

I picked a song that I seem to hear on the radio a lot, but couldn’t pick which station I think I hear it playing on most often. So, I went to the respective websites and looked at their recent songs and lo and behold in the hour before I wrote this post (Sunday afternoon) the song had been played on BOTH stations (48 and 50 minutes respectively). Aside from Sia’s “Cheap Thrills” I don’t think there’s a song I hear more often, and since I like this one better it’s the one I’m picking.

June 12, 2017

June 6 - Day 4 of the30-Day Song Challenge

A song that makes me sad

Ugh. I’m a very emotional guy (hello, Pisces!) and I feel things quite deeply. There are TV commercials that make me cry, retelling the story of my daughter’s successful spinal surgery makes me cry, and yes, when I hear certain songs an overwhelming sense of melancholy comes over me. Some songs are simply sad. Some have sad events associated with them. Others just happened to be playing when I was sad about something completely unrelated. This song, however, always seems to make me sad when I hear it. It’s a song about loss and how you can avoid the pain of it but only at the cost of not experiencing what you loved in the first place.

“Our lives
Are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd have had to miss
The dance”

June 7 - Day 5 of the30-Day Song Challenge

A song that reminds me of someone

The piss from the cow struck the windshield of the convertible and shot up, hitting Vern square in the face. The fact that he was in the middle of belting out “Thank God I'm a Country Boy” at the time made it all the more unbelievable. Nonetheless, it happened, and that cow could not have picked a better target; not because he deserved to get a face full of cow urine, but because of the way Vern handled it. He managed to keep his dad’s blue Miata on the road and he laughed about it afterwards. Heck, he laughed out loud and proud every time he told the story.
That’s the opening paragraph to the short story “Losing Vern”, my first publication and part of the Orange Karen: Tribute to a Warrior anthology. Vern, in this exaggerated and creative non-fiction piece is actually by brother-in-law, Ryan, and the opening paragraph is true. The rest of the story goes on to explain the unfortunate and bizarre events that followed his unexpected and tragic death.
I can’t hear John Denver without thinking about him and I especially can’t hear “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” without breaking out in a smile and shedding a tear at the same time. I miss you, Ryan. We all do.

June 8 - Day 6 of the30-Day Song Challenge

A song that reminds me of somewhere

I could probably name a hundred songs that remind me of somewhere. There is one that takes me back to two somewheres and I didn’t even know it had this power until I heard it played by the person I was with where these somewheres were. Thinking back, I suppose it could have been any number of tunes that took me back to those spots but this song is familiar to me and it has always been a favourite of mine, from the first time I heard it in the John Hughes flick The Breakfast Club.

Yup, it’s "Don’t You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds and the man playing it is none other than my dearly departed friend, Riaz. Ri played a cover of this tune sometime in 2012, I think, and his friend posted it to YouTube. When I first heard him playing it I was immediately transported back to my first-year university residence in 1993 and Riaz’s basement of the house he shared with some mutual friends in 1994 and 1995. These are places for which my memories are vivid and fond and they involve Riaz with his guitar and me sitting in awe of what he could do with the instrument and me sloppily singing along and undoubtedly fucking up the words to every song he played, including this one, I’m sure.

Whenever I hear the song now, I hear Riaz’s cover and I’m right back in residence in 1993 with a pack of Du Maurier Lights, long blonde bangs, my future wife on one side of me and Riaz on the other, smiling and in love with whatever music he decided to bring to life in that moment.

Don’t worry, Ri, we don’t forget about you.

June 9 - Day 7 of the30-Day Song Challenge

A song that reminds me of an event

As with most of these song challenge categories there are quite a few songs for each one that I could pick. A song that reminds me of an event, for me, has dozens upon dozens to choose from. I figure that since I’ve spent ¼ of the first 8 days talking about death that I would take this opportunity to reminisce in the other direction.

It was May 19, 2006, and it was the Friday of the Victoria Day long weekend. Jodi and I had our friends Trevor & Iza and their two kids over for the weekend and Jodi was ten days from her due date. I was working on the other side of the city and a good 45 minute drive from home.

Sometime around 10 am Jodi called me. “I need you to get home now,” she said. I hopped in my car and began the drive home. Fortunately any rush hour traffic had abated and I was able to treat the speed limit as more of a guideline. As I came within 5 minutes of my house the song “The Adventure” by Angels and Airwaves came on the radio.

The chorus starts like this: “Hey oh, here I am, and here we go, life's waiting to begin.”

Indeed it was.

I drove my wife to the hospital where I got the paperwork done around 11:30 am. Less than fifteen minutes later our second child was born, all ten pounds nine ounces of him. We were home by 2:30 pm (and that was only because I installed the car seat wrong and then got stuck behind someone who couldn’t work the paid parking machine). We had pizza for dinner and Trevor and Iza spent the weekend with us and our bouncing baby sumo wrestler of a newborn.

June 10 - Day 8 of the30-Day Song Challenge

A song I know all the words to

This one is kind of funny because I am TERRIBLE at knowing the words to stuff. I live inside the melody and can tell you how they go for hundreds and hundreds of songs but remembering words has never been my strong suit, which is ironic because I was in a little coffee shop band for a bit and was responsible for, you know, actually singing the words.

So I’m going to take a song out of our repertoire and use that for this category, because I know all the words and enjoy the song :-) This also happens to be a song by a band that my “big” sister, Kari, introduced me to way back in the 80’s. She always had good taste in music and even accompanied me to a Rush concert back in the early 90’s. I am pretty sure she was the one girl in the audience.

Anyway, back to the song. Crowded House singing “Better Be Home Soon” (their version, not the Argyle Speedo one).

June 11 - Day 9 of the30-Day Song Challenge

A song I can dance to

So here’s the thing: I don’t dance. It’s not something I, what’s the word? Do. I make Elaine from Seinfeld look like Paula Abdul. I have danced before, and on every occasion it hasn’t been pretty. It’s barely been observable as actual dancing. My go-to move is The Sprinkler. That pretty much says it all. Oh, I also almost broke a leg trying to “thread the needle”. Look it up on YouTube and imagine a six foot two inch gangling string bean of a white dude trying to pull that one off in front of the TV watching music videos.

All of that said, there is a song that when played I just have to groove to it. It’s the beat that I love and I can’t stop my toes from tapping whenever I hear it. The original, with its rapey lyrics, pisses me off to no end and I feel super guilty about “grooving to it” so I am glad “Weird Al” Yankovic did a parody with a set of lyrics that speaks to me and denizens of my friends.

June 12 - Day 10 of the30-Day Song Challenge

A song that makes me fall asleep

When I was in university I used to put on music before bed to help me fall asleep. University residence was very loud and I’ve never been the best sleeper and sometimes when you close your eyes and relax a little Pink Floyd is just what the moment calls for. When I started sharing a bed regularly with Jodi, whether it was in one of our apartments or in our bedroom when we first moved in together, we would always have music on to go to bed. There was LOTS of Sarah McLachlan and Counting Crows. So much Counting Crows. It was a lot of Counting Crows. I don’t think I can understate how much Counting Crows we listened to.

When it was just me in bed though, I would often look to something a little more instrumental, a little more transcendental, and a little less Counting Crowsy. Pachelbel’s Cannon in D was always a good one, as was anything from Orbital or the aforementioned Pink Floyd, but one of the first albums I used to listen to at bedtime was the Jurassic Park soundtrack. I’m sure I would still fall asleep in an instant if I lay down and listened to it today.

Here’s the Piano Guys playing the title track originally written by John Williams.

June 05, 2017

A friend of mine, writer and all-around great guy Gareth S. Young started doing this 30-Day song challenge and after seeing his posts day after day I decided I'd give it a shot. I haven't blogged much in a while so I thought I'd do it here as a weekly Monday summary to get me in the habit of writing at least something every day. Plus, MUSIC! Who doesn't love music?

This is the "challenge":

June 3 - Day 1 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

My favourite song

I have lots of songs that I love. I have even more that I enjoy in specific situations. One song, however, stands above them all. I have yet to listen to a song that captures my attention more than this one. Originally written by the Magnetic Fields, The Book of Love was covered by the Airborne Toxic Event and I first heard it on their live album played with the Calder Quartet at the Walt Disney Concert Hall the week after the death of the lead singer's grandma.

The lyrics, the emotion, the music... I love everything about this song.

June 4 - Day 2 of the30-Day Song Challenge

My least favourite song

This wasn’t even a contest for the longest time. My least favourite song by a country mile was Paranoid Android by Radiohead. It’s odd because Radiohead isn’t even my least favourite artist. They’re nowhere near the top, but they’re also not at the bottom. That Paranoid Android song, though, grates my cheese like you wouldn’t believe. But it’s no matter because Gwen Stefani wrote the song Hollaback Girl and it instantaneously took over the top spot. Even after the ridiculous amount of airplay it got on the radio I have not warmed up to it. Not even a little.

You know what’s B-A-N-A-N-A-S, Gwen? That hearing your song makes me want to throw my radio across the room.

June 5 - Day 3 of the30-Day Song Challenge

A song that makes me happy

There is so much about music to be happy about. Whether it’s seeing my wife pour through music on Spotify and see the look on her face when she hears a new song that that she likes, or hearing my daughter singing the same song over and over again because she absolutely loves it and must know how to sing it and play it on the guitar, or watching my son destroy the dashboard of my car because we are on our way to or from drum lessons and the Beastie Boys are playing and he. Must. Play. Along. For the longest time all I had was the radio and a few cassette tapes and CDs so when I first heard Rush’s Spirit of Radio my mind was blown. Considering when that song first came out I think it was about as meta as you could get at the time. The song is about the companionship and freedom that music brings but how ultimately it’s controlled by commercialization.

“For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall, concert hall... and echoes with the sounds, of salesmen, of salesmen, of salesmen”

When they play it live and hit that “concert hall” line all the house lights go up and the crowd goes crazy. I’ve seen them play that song live at least half a dozen times and it gives me goosebumps every time.

What would your songs be for these categories? Put 'em in the comments and tune in next week for days four to ten!